Brown says Obama hasn’t clarified health care changes

YOUNGSTOWN — President Barack Obama “hasn’t spoken frequently enough and clearly enough” about health-care changes, said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a fellow Democrat.

If Obama had spoken with more frequency a month ago about the overhaul to the health-care system earlier, the amount of misinformation about the proposal would be less now, Brown told The Vindicator during a one-hour interview today.

A bill dealing with health care changes needs to be approved this year, said Brown, a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Brown had hoped a bill would have been signed into law before Congress recessed earlier this month.

“If we’d have a bill we could all go out and explain and had the president’s support in July this misinformation wouldn’t have caught on like it did,” Brown said.

Obama has tried, with very little success, to reach out to Republicans to get their support for health-care reform.

Brown said the president recently told him and a few other Senate Democrats that it’s hard to get Republican support when about 20 percent of people who consider themselves Republicans don’t believe he was born in the United States and/or that global warming doesn’t exist.

For the complete story, read Saturday’s Vindicator or Vindy.com